Welcome to everybody. I’m going to go ahead and share my screen.

And, Here we go.

Okay.

Let me just repeat what, Sonia had mentioned just a moment ago. For me, this would be something I would appreciate a lot of interaction.

So if anyone has a question or a comment or an observation you’d like to make please just, just share that. Just chime in any anytime.

That would be brilliant. You know, I’d appreciate that very much.

So what we’re gonna talk about in our time today is this framework that I’ve been working on for a gully some some time now called organizational proptology.

And it’s the idea of how do we deal with asshats and the workplace. And so as I do this, I, yesterday, I I I have six grandkids. This is my number one job is to spoil my grandkids. But yesterday, I took them to go see the new troll movie, which which is fine for kids and and adults too. But whenever you see a movie, they do the little you know, hey, this is, sort of the rating. Our tool movie was PGG, actually. This is a PG thirteen session.

That I’m gonna share with you today. And the reason it’s PG thirteen is for the regular use of the a word. I’ll use asshat. Sometimes I’ll use asshole.

A hat that but what we’re talking about here are people who are real jerks, people who are just horrible, terrible people to work with before. And so because I use that term, I put a PG thirteen reading out there.

Most people understand that. It’s fine.

It really bothers my mom when she hears me talk this way, but, I’ve tried she’s not here, so we’re not gonna worry about it too much. Okay.

So here’s what we’ll talk about. Just a little bit of time. We’re gonna about what this this issue is. We I caught an epidemic as fascinating that the the work that we’re talking about here today came out in twenty eighteen.

So about a year and a half before COVID. And yet we were talking about this idea of a of an epidemic and and and a what we call mind virus. And so we’ll talk a little bit about that. We’ll talk about why people behave the way they do, and we’ll talk about the impact.

But probably the biggest thing we’re gonna kick on today is What do we do? If if we’re working with someone who’s really terrible, how do we how do we treat that and and how do we prevent that? And then the last little thing I’ll talk about is how do you deal with, with workplace assets? And it’s specifically just a little bit you know, how to deal with HR.

The sessions that are, grayed out, there there’s a more detailed view of this this work that that I do in half a day But just in the hour that we’ll have today, this is what we’ll do. So real quick thumbnail for me. I am not an academic, or a researcher.

Sorry, Pete. Sorry, Pete. Sorry to drop. Some people having a little heart hearing you. Could you try to volume up a little bit more, please.

Sorry. Yeah. No worries.

Is that better?

Not yet. Okay.

That’s disappointing. Who’s closer?

Okay.

I’ll see if I can’t just scooch just a little bit closer to the microphone.

Okay. Let me see if that works. Yeah. That’s a bit better. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. It’s good feedback.

So my background is is business.

I’m not an academic. My my first bit of business was in aerospace and defense. I worked for the company that makes SpaceX, and I was the software engineer who wrote the software that put suits on all the shuttle astronauts.

I can tell you a lot of fun stories about that, but that’s not what we’re here for. Just to let you know, that’s part of my background. When I left the space program, I went to work for American Express. I was with them for, about twelve years. I was their VP of operations and technology. So we launched all of the co branding products went all over the world.

Doing the work with American Express and co branding work. We also did some really neat broad prevention work with American Express.

When I left Amex, I had the opportunity to go work for a company called the Center Creative Leadership I think many of you in this audience would know who CCL is.

When the world is is not in too much chaos, which seems hardly ever now. Center probably trains around eighty thousand people a year in leadership development. Those are people from the highest levels in the organization all the way through to your frontline supervisors.

So that I I was Senior faculty and group director at the center. And here again, I went all over the world teaching writing, and, and speaking on leadership.

When I when I left the center, I had the opportunity, to join company called OG and E Energy Corp.

One of my best friends and and professional associations is on the call. Her name is Cheryl. Cheryl hired me to be her boss, really a crazy story.

But CCL are the set, OG and E Energy Court train, does about eight hundred thousand to a million customers in several states. We do power generation, power delivery. There was also a midstream pipeline group. This is a group power distribution, folks doing storm restoration in Texas after one of the hurricanes.

And, and so I was the head of HR for that organization for a little more than ten years.

For more than fifteen years, I’ve been a visiting professor and guest lecturer after due. Again, I’m not an academic person. I’m I’m a business person. My doctorate is in the leadership behavioral science world.

But it’s but but I I use that in a practical sense. And today, I’m I’m just me. I I I I have a very small organization. We go around doing leadership coaching and leadership development.

I say I’m a a leadership wilderness guy. I’ve been in the woods a few times. I’ve run from a few bears. I’ve gotten caught by a few bears.

So I’m just I help organizations and people kinda navigate their their leadership work and their leadership challenges.

So for me, this work about organizational proctology started a number of years ago when my oldest daughter, got out of college and was working, and she called me with this daddy. I really need your help. And that’s the worst thing a dad wants to hear. Her challenge was her boss was really a jerk, and she was up for a promotion to go somewhere else, but her boss wasn’t gonna let her do it. Because the boss didn’t wanna lose her from his group, and so he stopped the whole thing. And it just it was really, really a bad experience.

And that began my catalyst of thinking.

Why do people behave the way they do and what can we do to help those who have to deal with folks who are acting really poorly in the workplace.

So we came up with this, turn. We caught asshole related stress, parts. Right? Kind of a play on words, asshole related stress. And in essence, what it talks about is This is what occurs when a person, interacts with someone in the workplace who’s just really a miserable boss or a coworker.

The the the interactions have unrelenting demands, really demeaning behavior, a lot of disrespect disregard for what we might call common workplace civility. And every just and it just seems to go on and on and on. And what makes it worse is a sense that nobody in the organization either knows or cares.

And and those two things together come in to create what we call passhole related stress. This is the stress that we encounter when we have to deal with a really lousy person in the workplace.

So one of the things and one of the most important things that I talk about in this work is there’s no reason whatsoever anyone should have to tolerate an asshole in the workplace. And regrettably, my experience has been both personally and professionally that that sometimes we get to a place where we go, there’s nothing we can do. And that’s not true. There’s plenty you can do. And that’s what we’ll talk a little bit about today.

So, the a number of years ago, these folks, Lewis, and Omni, and Wyn and Ruka’s really neat book called the general theory of love and they really spoke about how how our understanding of love again from a, a psychological and a neuroscience perspective comes in. They’re their kind of anchor point was who we are and who we become depends in large part on who we love and who loves us. And, and I really, really like that. I think there’s a lot of, as I’d recommend the book highly to anybody. It’s just terrific.

We kind of borrowed from their framework, and I created right the general theory of assets. And here’s basically the way, I see this playing out. See, as had some merge from his conviction that that they’re gifted beyond anybody else, and so they’re due status and privilege and and they have the right to use and misuse people to their own advantage.

Assets really have this sense of a a warped sense of a greater good, and they absolutely have no compunction to misusing and mistreating people in service of whatever this crazy grand vision of either their personal status or or or some some lofty aspiration that they’re they’re looking to achieve, and they don’t mind who they step on or who they chew up and spit out.

And it’s and it’s really hateful. And you can see this We we see this very clearly in world events as you listen to people talk, but you see this play out also in the workplace over and over and over again.

For us, now in the US, what we really speak to is the distinction between behavioral observations and clinical diagnosis. Right? The things that we see and what we can actually diagnose.

And in the US, we have this thing called the Goldwater rule. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but, basically, it came up when, Barry Goldwater was running for president against Lyndon Johnson And a lot of folks in the behavioral science world in the US began to make observations about goldwater and speak about his his qualifications to be the president, and they were they were making discernments about his stability, his psychological profile but no one had ever met with him and spoke to him. So, the behavior science profession in the US kinda put together this goldwater rule It says you can’t really, clinically diagnose somebody publicly if you haven’t met with them, and you don’t have their permission.

In the in the US today, though, there is so much unbelievably bad behavior in the public space, particularly amongst those in politics that, the goldwater rule is pretty much thrown out the window.

A lot of us have just gotten to the place where we say we need to call it like we see it. If you watched any of the US politics just a a little while ago. Some of the folks actually came to blows, which is just one of the most just makes you proud sometimes when you see people that you put into office behave that way. So what we say is there’s a difference between what we observe and what we diagnose.

I’m not making any diagnosis. I’m just making observations.

So we talk about the state of ours in the workplace. And I’ll show you just a little bit of the insights that we’re drawing from this. This is a study that wasn’t done too long ago, the National Time Accounting, and basically what it’s talking about is the best and worst part of our day.

And so some of the things that we see is, right, this is between men and women. And the higher the number, that’s the worst part of your day. So when people are alone, how they’re feeling when they’re with their spouse or children or their friends, how they’re feeling. Again, the lower numbers represent a better part of their day.

But then we come up and say, well, how about when you have to deal with your coworkers? Well, now the numbers go up, which is showing a even worse part of their day, and then we ask them, how about when you have to deal with your boss, And in essence, what the data is showing us is interacting with your boss for many people is the worst part of their day. Is when they interact with their boss. Now, thankfully, that’s not the case for everybody, but it is definitely the case for many.

We also seen, again, this is from the Kenzie folks, again, a US centric’s view.

Most Americans suggest that interacting with their boss is indeed the worst part of their day.

Both in terms of toxicity and just overall stress. So I’m I’m kinda curious from my friends here in Europe.

From your experience, and maybe you you can’t say this. So we do this thing right and say, well, I’m okay, but I have a friend who really hates working for their boss. So you can use that if you want to. I’m just kinda curious if you can just chime in or just throw up on chat.

What’s your experience is working with your boss a good part of the day or the bad part of the day, or is it kinda neutral?

You can chime in or just throw something in chat.

Okay. Neutral. Alright.

Yeah. Yeah. There is a sense that, Yeah.

Yeah. Boy, those are great. Right?

Yeah. Here’s yeah.

So we talk about this.

We talk about this that you you guys may have heard this right. We joined the company and quit the boss. When we look at reasons that people exit an organization, very often the boss is is is a reason, one of the key reasons.

I heard one person say, in the US goes, I actually get four weeks of vacation every year.

Two weeks where I’m on vacation and the two weeks when my boss is on vacation. Right? So we do see that. We do see that interacting with our bosses, can be can be kind of a, a challenge.

Yeah. Okay. So let me keep let me keep pressing forward.

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate that.

Okay.

Alright. So let let’s talk about what we call both the psychology and the neuroscience, really bad behavior.

And, this has come out. Gosh, a little while ago, but boy, howdy, it is just terrific.

So why do people behave the way they do, and particularly in bad behavior? On the, psychology standpoint of it, we talk about this from the standpoint of the dark triad. And in the dark triad, there’s three things that come into play.

Let me get my One is narcissism.

The other is Machavellian kind of philosophy and psychopathic.

I think a lot of us would, at least in this this context of all of us here on the on the call on this session. We pretty much have a pretty good sense of what narcissism is self centered selfishness.

We see it play out in in in a lot of folks, particularly in the political arena. We see this just really, terrible way. What’s all about them.

Machabellian is sort of this approach that comes from the the Machavelli book, the prince, the ins justifies the means.

A Machavelli and point of view. Let me see if I have my notes right. They’re distrustful, of people.

You know, everybody’s out to get you, so you should probably get them first. So you add the narcissism and the Machiavellian, together, and that is a really toxic combination. But then you throw on to that the concept of psychopathy or anti social behavior. These are people who actually not only do they not mind when they create issues for folks, they actually get some level of aberrant enjoyment out of hurting people.

Are are in the US, our prisons are filled with with people who have this disposition.

And so those three things come together to create in the psychology frame, we call the dark triad. And when those three things come in together, you get really, really bad behavior. You get asshole behavior. Right? So that’s what we see from a psychological point of view from the neuroscience point of view, we see three things coming in play. A lack of empathy, is first and foremost. So the the brain has this really remarkable wiring The first part of the wiring is what they call egocentric emotional bias, which is just a hoity toity way of saying, for the most part, we are selfish.

But on the other side of our brain is this, but you know what? I know to really survive. I need to get along and create communities and and and look for the better good. And those two things in our brain are at odds with each other all the time.

You might remember seeing some of those cartoons where the character has an angel on one end, one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder. Well, that’s actually what’s happening in our brain. For those who lack empathy, the the awareness of who, you know, just trying to be more empathetic, that piece is really gone. And there’s a real big issue there. Limited connect connectedness is another area that happens, from a neuroscience point of view.

Masshats have a lot of friends, a lot of a lot of acquaintances, but very few friends. They know a lot of people but they don’t have a lot of terrific friends.

Probably one of the saddest things that I’ve seen is those people in the workplace who are just royal jerks.

When they retire, they become the loneliest people you would ever see.

Because they they just lack that connectedness.

And then at the end of it, it is self awareness, but they don’t they don’t care. They they know instinctively and intuitively, and they get that that feedback, but they don’t really care.

One particular terrible, terrible executive that that I was working with got the, the the thought was, hey, you know what? You could really do better to get some feedback because the way you’re coming across is pretty terrible. And almost verbatim their response was I don’t care. I don’t need feedback. I don’t want feedback. I’ve got this very high level And these are the key things I’m gonna get done, and you’re either gonna be with me or I’m gonna step on you. You know, just just a a really terrible thing.

So so then the question is, what does interacting with a really bad boss or coworker? What does that do to us? I’m gonna give you a quote from a, a colleague who actually had left our organization was working in another group and and just fell into working with a really terrible boss. And, and this is what, what they had to say.

They could Things were so bad that my only defense was to hang on until Friday and maybe get an asshole free weekend. But that relief was short lived because somewhere around Sunday afternoon, The reality of having to go back to work hit them, and they were overwhelmed knowing that within a few hours, they’d be right back in the Meyer. And and so sometime around Sunday afternoon, my my colleague would say I actually got physically ill. Just just sick to my stomach knowing that in a few hours, I’d have to ride back to work.

And then they shared what’s really even more sad is that Years later after that terrible person is out of their life, my friend would say still sometimes on Sunday afternoon, I look at the clock. And I flash back to where I was, and I break out into a cold sweat.

In many ways, interacting with a really terrible person, at work is a lot like being in an abusive situation. And And I would not any stretch of imagination draw a direct correlation because that would be inappropriate.

But a lot of the symptomology is very, very similar.

And then we’ll just we’ll just talk a little bit about that. So here are the impacts that we know that stress has on us on our body.

The physical, aspects, our headaches, and muscle tension, and chest pains, and fatigue, and and problems with our tummy.

And real issues sleeping.

Either we’re sleeping too much or we’re not sleeping enough.

And the impacts that stress has on our mood, anxiety and restlessness, no motivation, maybe anger and and kind of reacting poorly.

Being sad or depressed and diminished interest and intimacy.

And then on our behavior, we could have problems with eating. We might too much or not eat enough. When I get really depressed, I stop me. And then that just builds on itself and I can get into real real spiral.

Being angry. If we have issues with substance abuse, that is going to become exaggerated, when we’re under a lot of stress. And then sometimes we just withdraw socially.

These are all the things that happen, when we encounter ours, actual related stress. For more than, gosh, more than a dozen years, and I I’d have to go back and look. In America, the American psychological association has been running a study called stress in America, and you can go out and get that and, give it a look at, and it’s a US centric. So I’m not sure how it translates globally, but there are a lot of insights in there that I think are are, are really sort of go beyond borders.

And this a lot of this insight comes just exactly from that work. So so here we go. So now we have a sense of what it is, and we have a sense of how it happens and, why people do the way they behave the way they do. So what what I did is I took a look at A lot of you might be familiar with Jim Collins. We’re good to great, and he talks about the five levels of leaders.

And we just borrowed that framework and I reposition it to five levels of asshats in the workplace. Everything from an annoying prick all the way up to a planning asset. Right? And so we this is our our book that we have on that. You can you can pick that up on Amazon. But a lot of what we’re talking about is is in in this little presentation.

And so a lot of times we sit back and think, gosh, the worst asset to deal with would be the flaming asset that’s not true.

The people who are flaming assets, you kinda see them coming a mile away. You can, you know, navigate and get out of the way pretty easily. The most dangerous is what I call the sophisticated asset. The people who are just unbelievably clever, brilliant, if not, and They just have a way of manipulating both people and processes.

And before you know it, you’re in a real pickle. And there’s there’s almost there’s almost no way out other than exiting the organization. Right?

Okay. So with that as a backdrop, let me get to the thing that is the most important which is so what do we do?

So here’s the last little thing I’ll tell you. So the what is the prevalence of assholes in the workplace?

You can go to the DSM, the diagnostic statistical manual. It will talk to you about the prevalence of narcissist in the general population, the prevalence of psychopath or anti social behavior in the general population We extend that then into the workforce at different levels. And there’s a lot of different research, lenses that we draw on, but basically what we say in the general workforce.

The prevalence of assets in the workforce is about four percent, and it just continues to rise as you go on up the ladder. To the point that when we get up into the executive ranks, we’re seeing the promise about twelve percent of our executives are just real journeys. And in part, the that jerkiness got them where they were, and that’s a sad state of what we seem to value and promote. There’s a really good bit of work on psychopaths.

That’s in our book that we point to that says the general prevalence of psychopaths at the executive level is almost four percent, which is really dog on scary when you when you think about it. Okay. So then the the the big piece and the thing I really wanna focus on is, okay, Pete. So you talked about what it is.

You talked about what ours is. You explain a little bit about why people behave the way they do. And then you give us a sense of what the impact is on on folks. And now we have a sense of how prevalent this is.

But the real question, the real question, what do we do? If me or somebody I know is working with a real jerk in the workplace. What do we do? And that’s the meat focus of our of our book and and what I’ll talk to you right now.

What I say is ours is a is a virus. And again, this came out about a year and a half before COVID, but that we we use the virus lens and we say, There’s there’s a couple of treatment protocols and there’s a couple of preventions that we can engage that will help us navigate both dealing with ours and helping us from getting ours. So we say asshole is related stress as a mind virus that erodes the self confidence of those it infects.

And we look at it like this. So I tell the story My oldest granddaughter was about five or six, and we were doing a family picnic, and a little honeybee came around. And before we could shew it away, the honey bee landed on our daughter’s, our granddaughter’s arm, and it stung.

She does an allergic But five, six year old man, it was a it was, you know, you thought somebody had had had just cut off her arm. I mean, a lot of screaming and crying. I was crying. I’m an empathetic cryer.

It was a big, big deal. But, you know, after a few minutes, everything’s fine. And there we go. We were outside a few weeks later just doing something, and you guys are familiar with those puffballs that you kinda blow and the little seas kinda float around.

Well, one of these little up fall seas kinda float around my granddaughter, and she just automatically in her mind, related that seed to the bee, and she just had this visible reaction right in the moment, thinking that it was gonna sting. This is what happens when we contract the RS fires.

We have this very terrible experience, and then we see other things that we think are similar, but they’re probably not and yet we still have that same reaction. It’s like my friend who looked at the clock Sunday afternoon, and even though the asshole had been out of his life for a while when right back there. Right? You just have this this flashback.

So what we say, right? This is, again, just a repeat. Ours occurs when somebody sees no way out of miserable interactions, and there’s unrelenting demands as demeaning behavior, and it just seems to go on and on and on. And what’s worse, it seems like nobody cares.

So, here’s the treatment protocol. The first one we talk about is taking care of ourselves. There’s a lot more than I’m able to talk to you here in our session. But I’ll just talk to you about a few.

One is right, really paying attention.

And we use the analogy if you’re flying on a plane, and haven’t forbid the the the oxygen mask falls down. You gotta take care of yourself before you take care of somebody else. So there’s a lot of a really good work in our book that speaks to how do we just pay attention to ourselves? How do we put things in play both with people and little things that we can monitor on our own side just to make sure that we’re doing well. Right? The other one is taking time to disconnect.

I’m not sure how this plays in the European world, but in the US, I’m doing an awful lot of work in the agribusiness space was talking with some folks and and they were saying I really get a lot of grief from my spouse because when we take vacation, I’m not really on vacation. I’m connected to the to the phone or to the computer and and probably three, four or five times a day.

You know, I’m I have to be on a call or checking in with somebody.

And my family says you’re here, but you’re really not here because you’re always working.

And so the ability to disconnect is really, really hard. And so that’s something we have to really be mindful of. But there’s two really fascinating pieces of research, about how we can take care of ourselves, particularly when we’re when we’re combating ours. And the first one comes from the web and deep folks, and they talk about the health benefits of cuddling.

Now my wife says I use this research to my own advantage and I won’t argue her point.

But the research basically says this.

The positive benefits of kissing and cuddling are scientifically proven. So it’s a science. It’s just not me trying to kiss and cuddle with my spouse. The science is actually pretty clear when we’re kissing and when we’re cuddling our our our bodies, trigger off, endorphins or a prednisol that actually helps us combat stress.

And so there are really big health benefits, kissing and cuddling. My only caveat to this is Make sure you’re kissing and cuddling with people who it’s okay to kiss and cuddle with. Because if you kiss and cuddle with somebody you’re not supposed to, your in problem is gonna be bigger than your first problem. Right?

Just just be careful. And I say that tongue in cheek.

But I can tell you I’ve seen a lot of executives who were under great stress who kissed and cuddled with the wrong person and and their last date was much worse than their first. So make sure you’re kissing and cuddling with the right person. That’s a public service announcement. No charge. Right?

The other thing I’ll tell you, and this is really great. So there’s a when you get to PowerPoint, this benefits of cuddling. That’s a link. You can click on it.

It’ll take you to the web n d research. So you you have that that you can point to. The other thing, the folks at Harvard have been doing an eighty year study on wellness. It is perhaps the longest study, in play on health and wellness, that I’m aware of the current, administer of that product, that project, and here’s a link to it.

You can get on there and click in the the administrator has a really, really brilliant TED Talk. But here’s basically what they did. Back in the thirties, they they they took a group of Harvard students, and then they took a group of underserved, underprivileged, men in the Boston area, and they’ve been looking at those folks over the last eighty years. To see what is it that creates or what is there a is there a secret or is there a code that we can crack that speaks to how people health and wellness evolve over the years.

What’s fascinating is, John president Kennedy was one of the students and the the the the research group that they pull from Harvard. And basically what they said, so they’ve been looking at these individuals, and now they’re looking at their spouses and their their children, and they’ve been studying their, all their physiology, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, They’ve been looking at their economic status. They’ve been looking at what kind of jobs they had. They’ve been looking at all these things.

And they say there’s one thing. One thing that is the absolute clearest predictor of having health and wellness over time.

And that is having someone in your life who will stand beside you through life’s ups and downs.

And that doesn’t mean that, well, let’s just use this, just, you know, a spouse significant other. It doesn’t mean that you and the spouse don’t argue.

The research says some some of the folks, boy, they could just pick her back and forth like nobody’s business. But the single most important factor was that person was there to stand beside them through life’s ups and downs. And I can tell you in my personal life, my wife and I’ve been married for more than twenty five years. That is exactly the single biggest factor in helping me navigate the highs and lows of life.

Is having somebody who stands beside you when things are going well and when things aren’t going well. So the number one treatment protocol, there’s a number of things in here, but two I wanted to point out to you, in our time today was the benefits of cuddling and kissing with the one caveat. Make sure you’re hanging out with the right person. And the other one is the benefit of having somebody who’s gonna stand beside you through live size and lows.

So that’s treatment protocol number one. Treatment protocol number two is to be clear upon what’s really, really important. So the first one, right, be top of mind, of the things that are really, really important. Sometimes we stay in really terrible situations because we have an unrealistic belief about what’s really important, what should we really be hanging out with.

And, and that’s That’s just something we have to really be mindful of. There’s this really great movie, that we we watch in the US called city slippers, and It’s a story of some three friends who are kinda going through a midlife crisis. And so they do this experience where they go out in the Midwest part of the US, and they They sign up to to drive cattle. And, the, Jack Carlitz is is one of the main characters in his his whole thing in his movie is the secret to life is just one thing.

But everybody’s gotta find that one thing because it’s different for each person. I I love that story.

The other one is to make tangible progress towards really long term goals. So my my dad passed away a number of years ago, he was in the military. He was in the army, and he did two tours in Vietnam during the war.

And, when I got older, I was at a place where I could have you know, really good conversations with that. And and I asked him, so I said, so I’m just, you know, dad, how did you how did you get through that? Because obviously, that was really really tough. And he said it was pretty simple. The very first day I got there, I got my calendar out, and I put it on the wall, and I put a big circle about when my time was to leave, and I crossed out every day that I was there. And I counted the days.

Because just knowing, here’s how much time I have to pull off the calendar before I can get out of there and get back home. Made all the difference in the world. Right?

And then the other one is right where it really, really be clear on how much is enough.

So there’s this really great story. And, And I just wanna share it with you very, very quickly.

There was a swimmer Florence Chadwick who in nineteen fifty two sought to be the first woman who would swim from Catalita Island to the California coast. So about twenty six miles.

On the first attempt that she made, the water was just ice cold. It was really foggy.

She could hardly see anything in front of her. And, chase boats were actually having to fire shots at sharks that were in the water to keep them away.

And she just she was just going on and on and on. She could not see the shore where she was trying to get to. And at about the fifteen hour mark, She just she she was just spent. She just couldn’t go any further.

And so she had everybody, you know, just take her out of the water and So she’s in the little Chase boat getting warm and getting her senses back. And at that moment, the fall kinda lifted and and lo and behold, the shore was probably about a mile or so away. And she said, dad, gunnett, if I had If I had seen how close the shore was, I know I at least had another mile in me. Well, a few months later, she made the attempt again.

And the conditions were exactly the same. It was really foggy. It was really cold.

But she had the people in the boat kinda give her a sounding. This is how far you’ve gone, and this is how far there is. And actually, she finished it in record time. I think it was about thirteen hours.

So so knowing what your your end goal is, we can deal with a lot of really bad things if we understand what the end goal is in mind. So if you’re working with a really terrible boss, a really terrible cowork or leader, whatever that looks like. Think about what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. Hey, listen.

If I can get this experience on this project, that’ll be terrific. And then once I have this experience, I’m gonna move on. Or, hey, listen. I only need to hit this this day mile phone and I achieve these financial metrics.

And once I have that, then I’m gonna go on. Those can be really helpful because it can allow you to to kind of navigate those crazy waters for a little bit of time. But that last bullet, be clear on how much is enough. I’ve seen people and I would confess times, I’ve done this, stay in really lousy situations, thinking that I was gonna achieve or gain some sort of either experience or financial metric.

And at the end of the day, it just wasn’t worth it.

And I I I I I got the heck out of it.

And in retrospect, there wasn’t any experience or money that was worth hanging out in that very, very terrible situation.

So the second treatment protocol that we talk about just to really be clear on what’s important. So the first treatment protocol, right, take care of yourself. Make sure that you’re being mindful of how you’re doing, and you have people in your life who are giving you that feedback. And then the second treatment protocol is to really be clear on what’s important.

Then the other thing that we talk about, so then how do we prevent how do we prevent contracting the arse mind writers. Well, here’s something that’s really, really neat. People who have worked for a really terrible boss in the past have acts have actually created sort of this little antibody immune, system within them. They have the ability to deal with another crappy boss that might enter their lives.

They know what to do. They know how to navigate it. They can kinda manage it a little bit better. Those who’ve dealt with it well.

Right? Those who’ve dealt with dealing with assholes in their life in a really good positive way have created some defense mechanisms and some immunity to future jerks in the workforce.

Those who’ve not dealt with a bad boss in the past.

We’ll talk with that in a minute. They really had a a challenge because they’re really in a pickle because they’ll see bad bosses even when there isn’t a bad boss. But those who dealt with a bad boss have created a bit of immune system. Think about yourself.

If you had to deal with a really terrible boss and you figured out how to navigate that, Having forbid you encounter another bad boss, you have at least some experiences to draw on that will help you navigate it the first time. You may not wait as long to get out of the organization or to to to implement something that says I’m gonna prevent this person from really creating havoc in my life. So then the question is, is there a way that we can take that immune system that some people have because they’ve encountered a bad boss, can we take those antibodies as it were and translate it to those who have not yet encountered a bad boss?

And the answer is yes. Part of that is by learning through these experiences.

In our space, we talk about learning agility, which is the ability to take our experiences and learn from them, but the my mom says the only bad the only thing better than learning from your experience is learning for someone else’s. So we can learn from someone else’s experience in interacting with a really bad boss. Part of it is looking at resources like this. Part of it is being a support and a friend, and a and a safe space for someone who’s also working through a very bad boss, but those are some of the things that we can do to to strengthen our immune system from dealing with a really, really bad box, and it’s very, very effective.

The other thing that we can do, so we talk about limit or not limiting our exposure and using protection and setting boundaries.

Now here’s this is a little bit tricky.

We have to make sure that we don’t, we don’t spend too much time with a really bad boss because there is this thing that will happen and that is the bad boss’s behavior where we’re off on us.

We will in fact become an asshole if we hang out with someone who’s an asshole. It will happen, and I’ve seen it over and over again. It’s just and again, we could talk about the the neuroscience behind this, but it’s called mirror neurons. When you see somebody’s behavior, you begin to emulate that behavior.

You have friends who use a certain word. So I hang out now a lot with my friends from the UK. I find myself using the word brilliant all the time. All the time because a lot of my friends in the UK use brilliant.

And so now I use the word brilliant.

And and, you know, it just happens. Right? We we do it all the time. We have to be very careful when we have a really terrible boss in our life or coworker that we limit our exposure because the more we hang out with them, the more their bad behavior is gonna wear off on us.

So we have to be careful. But but it’s really hard to navigate. You can’t totally stay away from them. Because a lot of times I’ve seen people go that out of sight’s out of mind.

That is not true because the boss will eventually track you down and and it could actually be a worse situation. Where the heck have you been and why haven’t I seen you? And blah blah blah blah, it can just be awful. So we have to be close enough so that we’re not an afterthought, but not so close that we become infected.

The other thing, and this is really important, is to set boundaries. So I have the honor of working with, a lot of seniors at Purdue University.

And, and we and my work is helping them think about leading and what kind of leader they wanna be and what kind of, reputation or legacy they wanna create. And one of the things I’m try to impose, instill in all of the, seniors is know where the line is before the line shows up.

Think about where your boundaries are before you’re actually faced with stepping over that boundary because if you’re not sure where the boundary is, you may find yourself on the other side of it before you even think about, well, should I do that or not? That’s really, really important, I think, for all of us, is to understand where the boundaries are. You know, this is okay, but I’m not gonna tolerate this.

And that’s gonna be different for everybody, and I wouldn’t impose my values on anybody but that’s really important for each of us as I understand and set what those specific boundaries may be.

So here’s the here’s the last little thing I wanted to share with you.

And and so now I’m gonna speak to you as the former head of HR for thirty four hundred people, from a senior faculty group director at the center for creative leadership who interacted with just an awful lot of HR professionals.

So I’m gonna give you what we call the in wide HR lens. And then, and again, I will tell you this is from a US centric view. So if it’s if it’s a little bit different than what you guys experience, I’d love to hear that.

But the question that I often get, and and I’ve struggled with this, at what point do I go to HR and tell them about this awful situation on them.

And and that is a really challenging question to answer. So I’m just gonna give you my two cents on it. What you wanna think about before you go to HR is the one, think about what the role of HR is in your organization.

If HR is simply a personnel department, they hire the fire. They kinda make sure all the rules and regulations are followed.

You might not get a lot out of your HR, folks. But if HR is responsible for making sure the the people in your organization are nurtured and cared for, then then maybe maybe there’s there’s more that there’s some work you can get there. But the other thing you have to really mask yourself is can I speak anonymously to the folks in HR?

And it’s it’s a fair question to ask, hey, can is what I’m saying to you, can we keep this confidential?

The really good HR folks will say It depends on what you tell me. And if you hear that from an HR person, then then you’re probably in a good place. But if the HR person goes, oh, sure, well then be careful because because that’s that’s a standard answer that may or may not be true. So I’m just I’m this is my experience both in HR and working with HR folks.

So that’s my two cents. Here’s the other thing is is the really terrible person, a coworker or an boss or an executive. Right? If it’s a coworker, HR has a little more latitude to kinda deal with it.

If it’s a boss or even an executive, it’s gonna be a bit of a challenge. And and here’s one of the things you you may know, but you haven’t really thought about. Odds are pretty good that the folks in HR already know about the person. It’s very unlikely that the HR people don’t know who the real jerks are in the company.

Trust me. They know.

HR HR’s plugged in to the rumor mill in a really big way.

So they probably have a pretty good sense of who the who the jerks are in the workplace.

The real question when you decide to go meet with HR is what you wanna come from a meeting. Right?

And then here, the really good HR folks will ask you the question. What would you like to see happen?

Right?

They may not say out loud. Well, we know that Pete’s a real jerk.

But they probably already know. But the real question that the good HR folks were asking, so okay. So what what what are you hoping will happen from our meeting today? Right? Is this just cathartic? Do you just wanna to vet or are you really looking for something to happen? So here’s here’s my my advice.

Be mindful of a few keywords or phrases.

If you work these words or phrases into your conversation, with HR, it can be helpful. One of the things that you can say is I just wanna have a respectful, hostile free workplace, or I just wanna be treated with dignity and respect.

Those things are really key words for HR. If you say I feel as though I’m in a hostile workplace, or I feel unsafe or I feel I’m being abused or I feel like I’m I’m being singled out because of some level of discrimination.

Those are key words that really good HR people have to key in on And again, from the US perspective, once the folks in HR hear those those key words, they’re obligated to do something about it. And so, but but just just be careful. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go to HR.

I’m just saying be thoughtful about the kind of HR group that you have and and what their role is in the organization because Because, truthfully, a lot of times HR already knows about it and they’re they’ve done what they can do. And there’s there’s hardly anything they can do.

But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go. It just means that you should just be thoughtful about what it is you hope to achieve.

So you know what? We’re right at I think we have about ten minutes left.

And so Oh, yeah. Okay. So the last bit of work, and so this is something that, we’re we’re working on for the next, version of our book, around workplace PTS state. And, so there’s really good work. I I would imagine most of you guys, understand this, in the workplace or in the psychology world.

We we now understand we have PTSD that’s, that’s triggered off an event like a car crash or a plane crash or something like that. And then we have complex PTSD, which has triggered off a series of events.

And, like working for a really terrible box. So there’s really good work that’s that’s beginning to emerge. That speaks to workplace PTSD, which really centers off complex PTSD, which is just remarkable, not just in identifying what that looks like, but then talking about and helping us understand how to navigate that and probably equally important how to recover.

Because recovering from working with a really bad person. So we talked here about what do we do to treat it, what do we do to prevent it, there is a really good work that’s beginning to emerge. How do we recover from it?

And that’s that’s work on the horizon for for for me.